Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why did the .243 outsell and eventually almost obsolete the 257 Roberts?

Growing up in the southeast near Monroeville Alabama, my uncles would put me on a deer stand with a shotgun as big as I was tall and run the dogs. Sometime in my mid teens one of my uncles started hunting with a center fire rifle a .243 Winchester, he did not keep it long getting a .270 instead which he has to this day but he is too old to hunt now. I have had a couple of .243's over my life time but have usually gravitated to larger bore rifles for deer hunting as I had always believed Tim the Tool man was right when he said "more power" yet as we all know Tim�s supercharged lawn mowers usually had more power than he really needed. I have found that the .243 (also 223 calibers) evokes some prejudice from time to time except at that exact instant in time that the 14 year old boy or girl tags a 12 point with one. The two plus two fact that someone actually killed a deer with a 243 is quickly forgotten and the �if someone brings a .243 your gonna be trackin a wounded deer� talk kicks up before the 12 point is hanging on the meat pole.

From time to time I have run into a man that hunts with the .257 Roberts and all have admitted satisfaction with its performance, but then most people are prejudiced about what they hunt with. Many on this forum who�s opinion I respect and who have a lot more knowledge regards hunting than I do also like and hunt deer with the Roberts with no problems. In my mid 50's now I have found that those that say �bigger holes always means less running� have not killed that many deer in their lives.

And yet the Roberts would appear to be a cartridge that mostly only rifle cranks and gun nuts admire. For myself after an internal argument where I finally asked Tim the Tool Man to leave the room and take his 70 grains of powder per shot .257 Weatherby I think I want a Roberts rather than waste more money by buying and selling my third .243!

Yet the reality for 99% of the hunting public is that when they walk into a gun shop wanting a light recoiling rifle they are looking for a .243 for themselves or for their son or daughter!

My question is why did hunters and the shooting community dump the Roberts and run to the .243? The performance appears to be almost identical except a tiny bit of frontal area advantage towards the Roberts?

What happened to the Roberts and why is the .243 more popular?

Advertising. Gun mags need to sell advertising space so they write about the latest and greatest. Articles create interest in new products. New item sells. Old fades.

the .243 had flashy velocity numbers compared to the roberts, plus the fact that it was the latest thing. people like the roberts sometimes due to the "nostalgia" of it. not to knock the roberts, but it's a little like the .22 hornet, it was the thing at one time and now there are better things that have come around. i don't think the .243 is one of them however. i just think the 6mm remington and the .25-06 are better tools.

-Matt

The .243 had all the hype. Exaggerated ballistics. Newer is better. It kind of reminds me of the "Hottest chick on the planet" thread. Looks good on paper, but how will it work when I get past infatuation.

Leon

I am one of the guys who think big holes in deer are often a good thing, and I have killed scores of them including three mature bucks this year.

I have tried nearly everything,and killed a 175 pound wild boar yesterday with a 243,my son's Handy Rifle. I wanted my son to shoot the boar but it was killing a very good tracking dog and I had to shoot quickly to save the dog's life.

I hit the boar in the neck,right where I have hit others and killed them instantly,he fought on as if unhit and I reloaded and shot him in the head at point blank range. I spent thirty minutes with a friend sewing up the dog,I don't think I'll ever shoot another boar with a 243.

I recently bought a Kimber 257 Roberts and have only shot paper with it so far,but it shoots a 120 grain bullet at the same velocity that a 243 does with a 100 grain bullet.

I think this makes a 257 a better choice for animals larger than small deer,which goes to your question of why is the 243 so much more popular?

Modern plus P loads featuring 120 grain bullets at 2900 fps were not available when the 243 appeared on the scene,loads for the Roberts were mild and pretty old fashioned compared to the faster 243 loads.

The 243 was seen as modern,the Roberts as obsolete,and like the 7x57 it was seen as a handloaders cartridge. In the 1950s,everything was seen as either modern and good or obsolete and not worth keeping around.Manufacturers could sell new rifles in 243 at more profit than they could introduce modern loads for the 257 Roberts.

If a guy likes a 243,he should use it, but I think my new 257 Roberts is going to replace the 243 at my house,I've never worried much about going with the crowd.

I will tell you one thing. I believe bigger bullets mean less tracking. I hunted North Hampton county in NC for 18 years with a group of RI hunters. In that time, I used a .300 Win. In 18 years, I never had to look for a deer shot with that rifle. Shot in the shoulder, they fall on their faces. I'm talking about over 60 deer. In those 18 years, I have had to track numerous deer shot by other hunters with the .243 Winchester. I'm talking about deer shot well. A lot of folks don't care. As long as there's a blood trail to follow and a dead deer at the end.

Years back,I had more than a couple of western ranchers tell me the Roberts is more gun on the antelope flats than the 243.

The reason the 243 is more popular is because the 243 and 6mm got piles of press,were touted as superior by people using slipsticks and computers; kinda like the argument the 338 is "superior" to the 375.

The way I look at it is the Roberts is as good on varmints, and better on larger animals than the 243,due to larger bore size and heavier bullets.

The 257 Roberts and the equally good 250 Savage were designed and marketed as big game rounds and only big game rounds.

Then, in an age when people still knew the value of make-do and having one tool to do several jobs, along comes the 243, which is cleverly advertised as the first dual-purpose cartridge. Well, one gun that's good for everything from mice to moose? That sounds wonderful! Shoots faster and flatter to boot? Why, it's the answer to all our shooting problems.

It wasn't, as we all soon learned. But by then the hype had sold a trainload of them, it did work on most deer-sized critters if you were very careful about bullet choice and aim - and deer are still the largest animals most of us ever hunt.

The 243 became so popular that companies stopped chambering rifles for the quarterbores. We can't make everything, and people are buying the 243, they reasoned. Today, they still do. I had a conversation with Browning just a few months ago, in which I urged them to offer their delightful Micro-Hunter in 250 Savage as a lightweight gun for smaller framed shooters. They gave me a flat "no way in heck" answer.

Still, if some company brought out just such a rifle - maybe as a nostalgia item - I bet they'd sell a grundle of them.

when roberts and gunsmiths of his kind built their rifles, they worked with what they had, which were often '93 mausers or similar...
for this reason, even after remington legitimized the cartridge, it was seriously underloaded due to the preponderance of weak action designs used by the early gunmakers...

that's why the .257+P loading came to be, decades later... it's what the roberts should have, and would have been, if it had been designed originally by a big name gunmaker like remington...

the .243 had no such shaky origins... it was built for pressure and speed from it's inception....
1950s .243 factory ammo far outperformed the BOB...

I sure care! I want that deer down fast. What those things do is find the deepest,steepest holler to die in. I've killed 4 deer with the 243, every one of them found the bottom of a holler. I was never impressed with that round.

My current favorite deer rifles are my Rem Classics in 7x57 and 8x57. I shoot 154 grain Hornady bullets from the 7mm and 170 grain Sierras from the 8mm. Deer go down fast from either with the edge to the 8mm.

i actually read, rocky, that ned roberts conceived of the .257 as a pure varmint cartridge...
forgive my foggy recollection, but i believe that it was in Whelen's "mr. rifleman" book...
it was in the same book that Colonel Whelen himself opined that the .243 was a better cartridge for the average woods wanderer...

it was warren page who gave the .243 it's biggest boost... he used his .240 page pooper all over the globe with excellent results on all kinds of big game... winchester pretty much copied pages design, which page himself arrived at by necking down winchester T65 (7.62 nato) prototype cases...

therefore, i'd surmise that the .257 was designed as a varmint cartridge, and the .243 was designed, in a later day and different mindset, as a dual purpose cartridge...

The most common grain bullet most people use for deer hunting in both cartridges is 100 grains. If you can tell the difference on game between the two, your imagination is better than mine. I've used both and I sure can't. Now if you move up to 120's in the Roberts I suppose you would maybe see a difference, but most Roberts don't shoot them as well as 100s.

The problem I see with the Roberts is it's a "tweener", a little long for a short action, and a little short for a long action. I have also found the .243 to be more accurate, or shall I say easier to find accurate loads. I think the only real reason people like the Roberts so much and tout it as better than the .243 is they simple think the name is cool. They just love to call it by it's nickname "Bob". It's a cult thing.

I think you uncle was right, if you want to see a power difference get a .270 winchester.

No, the 6mm Rem was desinged as a varmint round and barreled for that purpose. It couldn't shoot the heavier deer class bullets well. The 6mm rem is slightly superior to the 243.

The 257 Rob is somewhat handicapped by it's age. It was chambered in a lot of older small ring Mausers so the SAMMI pressures are spec'ed in respect for them. Loaded at full power in a modern rifle it's a whole nuther beast.

That might be true about the 257's origins, John. But by the time it got "factoried" it was seen and marketed as a big game round. Marketing guys often see things other than designers do; witness the 250 Savage. That little darling was "supposed" to be a big game round based on a 100-gr bullet. But the marketing guys were on fire to have the first 3000 fps round, so they kept trimming back the bullet weight a grain at a time until they got to 87 grains and that magic muzzle speed. The only problem was that an 87-grain bullet was neither fish nor fowl. If they had just loaded it with a 75 and also a 100, they'd have had a true multi-purpose round. But they didn't. Note that when the 243 came along in those two exact bullet weights, it took off in popularity.

Marketing weenies; sheesh!

hey gar,

i suspect that you're confusing the 6mm rem with it's identical predecessor, the .244 rem...
the .244 was barreled for varmint weight bullets... the 6mm rem, from it's introduction was barreled to shoot 100 gr bullets...
you are right though, in that the 6mm is clearly superior to the .243, balistically...

first impressions make a big difference, though... and the .243 saw the light of day in warren pages hands...
the 6mm rem was simply remingtons marketing reaction, and the ballistic difference is very slight...

i'm gonna be thoroughly upset if you guys change my mind about my .257 build, for which the barrel is ordered and paid for!!!

most ranchers that i know, and that's a fair number, prefer the 22-250 for antelope...
and just about everything else that they shoot!!!

I have been deer hunting in the south about 35 years and have killed well over 150 deer. In the early '70's my hunting partner bought a 243 and after that every year we spent much of a day tracking a deer he had wounded with that 243. This is a 1st class hunter and shot, if most of these deer these deer had been shot with with a 270 or 30'06, we would have found them in a few minutes. In the mid '80's I shot out the 30'06 barrel on my 700 bdl and my gunsmith screwed on a 257 Roberts takeoff barrel. After killing a number of deer with 120 gr Speer hot cores, I losting a 250# hog, I switched to a 115/120 gr partation and kept on. I now have 3 custom 257 Roberts and no 243's. Early the season when I'm in the deep swamp I hunt with a 308 or 35 Whelen but when I move up to the ridges I go back to the Roberts. As an aside, when the owner of our hunting land got upset about the number of lost wounder deer and put a big fine for failing to recover the 243's dissapeared from our hunting club.

jimmyp,

You asked a good question and the members did well with replies.

Ned Roberts was the inventor of the .257 Roberts and he was an active rifleman and writer. He participated in many schuetzen matches also.

The late Col Townsend Whelan used the 257 Roberts all summer long on his farm in Vermont. While Whelan's primary quarry was the woodchuck the bear season was open all year starting in April and Whelan carried the Roberts to overlap those animals.

Hmmm. All that from .014 diameter and maybe 20 grs. of bullet weight? Did anyone ever think of using Parts in the 243?

I have shot very few critters with a 243, much more with a 25/06, but a pard of mine has shot close to 20 hogs with his 243 and 95 gr. Ballistic Tips, just last fall. One sow was an honest 300 lbs..

I've even shot some nice hogs with .257 100 gr. MatchKings, Interloks and BT's. I can't see where a deer would be that much more difficult?

I'm betting most Roberts rifles were not pushed by Winchester in favor of their new 243, Remington didn't chamber one and the low pressures of a round nosed 117 gr. factory load didn't help.

Couple that with the 243 with both varmint and deer loads available. If the Roberts had a decent 100gr. load it would have still had lower published speeds than the 243. At that point (to avg joe rifle buyer) where was the incentive?

I'm glad the Roberts is still around. Mine has replaced my 25/06.

I have hunted with the .243 and 6mm Rem. enough to know they are both adequate deer rounds. It has been my observation that this is only true if non varmint bullets are used and one doesn't try 400yd shots. If it were not so we would not see so many .243's in use and so much ammo at the local gun shop. At the end of the day hunters use what works and the .243 does work. As to the original question, the answer is more complicated. Some of the answers were reasonable, marketing of the new wonder rounds, lack of good ammo for the .257, and so on. As a result the fine .257 fell behind and has not been able to catch up. But we loonies know the .257 has some undeniable advantages over the .243, one being a 115-120gr. bullet at nearly 2900fps. As I write this I have my .257 Serengeti/Montana Mod.1999 out and ready to go to the range today. The .243 has been staying home alot lately.